DVD Review: Cinematic Titanic: Blood Of The Vampires

Once again, the geniuses at Cinematic Titanic prove that they’re just as capable of thrashing a crappy movie as they were back in their Mystery Science Theater 3000 days. This time, our captive heroes and heroine (Joel Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu, Frank Conniff, J. Elvis Weinstein, and Mary Jo Pehl, respectively) are forced to sit through a real train wreck of a moving picture entitled Blood Of The Vampires, a film that just goes to show you don’t need talent to make a movie, just one set of plastic fangs to distribute evenly amongst your cast.

In a nutshell, Blood Of The Vampires is an appallingly dumb and dull 1966 Filipino vampire drama from director Gerardo de Leon (who also helmed several of Eddie Romero’s equally asinine Blood Island movies) that’s set in 19th century Mexico (“That’s always a good sign — when English is your movie’s third language!” quips Mr. Weinstein as the film is being introduced by the gang’s “captor,” Dave “Gruber” Allen, using his alias Todd Carlin), and stars Filipino cult actor Eddie Garcia (another Blood Island graduate) as Eduardo, the elder son of the wealthy but rather doomed Escodero family.

Life seems to be heading in the right direction for the Escodero kids: Eduardo has found the woman of his dreams and his sister Leonore (Amalia Fuentes) has found the man of her dreams in the dashing young suitor Daniel Castillo (Romeo Vasquez). All it would take now to ruin everything would be for old man Escodero to admit that his late wife isn’t dead like everyone believed her to be, but, in actuality, has turned into a soulless blood-sucking vampire whom he has imprisoned in the basement and whips into submission repeatedly when she starts getting hungry — and, wouldn’t you know it, that’s exactly what happens, and this terrifying secret will serve as the cataclysm that will bring about the fall of the once-prestigious Escodero family like a bad little kitten thrashes and shreds a fresh roll of toilet paper.

First, mom bites Eduardo. Next, dad kills mom. Then, Eduardo kills dad, infects his girlfriend, the female servants, and his own sister (some serious shades of icky goin’ on here), but not before killing his sister’s beau first — who (wait for it) returns as a ghost to challenge the vampiric Eduardo to a swordfight! And the undead wuss is scared of a spirit! What the hell is going on in this movie?

Article Author: Luigi Bastardo

Luigi Bastardo is the disgruntled alter-ego of Adam Becvar, a thirtysomething lad from Northern California who has watched so many weird movies since the tender age of 3 that a conventional life is out of the question. …

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